DND Monitoring Desk:
The Afghan Taliban has received $9.6 billion in cash in the last five years from the UN-USA network. Since SIGAR, which was one of the most critical U.S. oversight bodies monitoring aid and expenditures in Afghanistan, officially shut down in January 2026 after 17 years of activity, the latest data is not available because there is no international organization working now to monitor aid.
Until its closure in Afghanistan, SIGAR released dozens of investigative and audit reports, many of which exposed corruption, mismanagement, financial waste, and the failures of major reconstruction projects.
.@SenateGOP & .@NRSC fund terrorists
— Appeal to Heaven 🌲 (@VatoDelcosta) September 3, 2026
In its last report of 2025, SIGAR warned that the Taliban frequently uses coercive tactics, including physical force, to dictate where international aid is distributed on the ground. Despite the Taliban’s public denials, these finalized reports reiterate that while cash packages are aimed at humanitarian relief, they inevitably provide an indirect economic buffer to the Taliban regime by stabilizing its local currency (Afghani). The closure of SIGAR operations in Afghanistan left nobody internationally who could report how UN/US money is being used by the Afghan Taliban.
Based on the specific mathematical formula provided, multiplying the $40 million in cash arriving in Kabul every week by 4 weeks, 12 months, and 5 years results in a total of $9.6 billion in cash arriving in Kabul and being handed over to the Afghan Taliban in the last five years. However, official audits by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) in 2024 cited the cash used by the Afghan Taliban as being between $2.9 billion and $3.6 billion.
It may be remembered that the United States has made available over $21.36 billion globally for Afghanistan assistance, asset management, and refugee relocation since August 2021. Of that total, over $3.63 billion was allocated specifically to assistance on the ground within Afghanistan. According to available open-source data, from October 2021 through mid-2025, the U.S. disbursed $3.5 billion in direct aid to the country (through Afghan Taliban networking), with 72%, according to the data, spent on humanitarian operations managed through the UN and partner organizations. SIGAR’s final auditing efforts in 2025 flagged $541 million in aid funds as suspicious or lacking sufficient oversight documentation during its late-stage investigations.
It is pertinent to mention that SIGAR data stated that the dollars are first sold in the local market to obtain Afghan currency, and the money is deposited into designated UN accounts at private commercial banks in Afghanistan to fund 19 UN entities, the World Bank, and dozens of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) providing food, medical care, and humanitarian relief because international wire transfers to Afghanistan are frozen. This is done through private banks purchasing local currency from the Taliban-controlled central bank (Da Afghanistan Bank), allowing the regime to accumulate U.S. dollars. Moreover, the Taliban extracts millions of dollars by taxing NGO workers, imposing licensing fees, and forcing aid groups to pay for utilities and operating permits.
Several U.S. lawmakers have introduced several bills, such as the “No Tax Dollars for Terrorists Act” and the “Stop Funding Global Terrorists Act”, to block U.S. aid from benefiting the Afghan Taliban. These bills have successfully advanced through the House and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but they have faced hurdles and have not yielded any results.
UN organizations in Kabul, such as the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), work under the financial blackmail of the Taliban (fund transfers to banks and all banks being under Afghan rule). Therefore, these organizations have to maintain friendly relations with the Taliban, overlooking the brutality of Afghan Taliban rule, because UN organizations cannot work independently when economic resources are completely controlled by the Afghan Taliban. Senior Taliban leaders control the central bank, which has no systems in place to prevent terrorism financing or money laundering, according to the inspector general’s report. Moreover, humanitarian organizations are sometimes forced to pay cash directly to the Taliban. Local Taliban leaders have demanded that the UN and aid groups hire their members and relatives.
